Disaster Fatigue

Bangladesh needs bailing outagain. The cyclone that tore into the southeastern coast last week was the worst storm to hit the nation in two decades. Winds up to 145 mph drove a 20-foot-high tidal wall of water over a dozen low-lying islands and onto the mainland. When the waters receded, more than 125,000 people were dead and some 9 million left homeless. No one had seen destruction on such a terrifying scale since the 1970 cyclone, and the famine that followed, which killed between 300,000 and 1 million people. The storm's havoc, flooding more than 20,000 square miles, hobbled relief efforts. Six Bangladeshi Air Force helicopters worked dawn to dusk dropping food, water-purification tablets, medicines and rehydration salts. But supplies were reaching only a fraction of the victims. Meanwhile, international aid trickled in. The European Community ponied up $12 million; Japan pledged and the United States released $2 million each and an additional $100,000 to private agencies, many already stretched to the snapping point by efforts to ease catastrophes elsewhere.

Disaster is never far away in the Third World. But it was rare for it to strike three separate regions at once. Concern for the fate of Bangladesh competed last week with fears for the 1.5 million Kurdish refugees displaced in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War (page 42). And both submerged an even deeper dilemma: the plight of sub-Saharan Africa, where 29 million people face death from starvation and civil war in what Save the Children, a relief agency, calls "the worst famine in Africa in living memory." There isn't enough money, manpower or sympathy to go around. "People worldwide must have the feeling of, 'African famine again?"' says Dr. Tatsuo Hayashi of the Japan International Volunteer Center in Tokyo. "Press reports, if ever made, are losing value as news these days."

What accounts for the tepid response? Some factors are perennial: lack of awareness, an absence of national self-interest, a shortage of resources. But needy causes must now reckon with a recent factor: donor fatigue. Besieged by so many appeals, people grow weary of giving, particularly if they've already dug into their pockets for a cause, only to see the trouble continue. Endemic problems, like famine in Sudan and Ethiopia, or seemingly uncontrollable ones, like cyclones and earthquakes, stand little chance of sustained public compassion and support.